Services: Go.Web

GoAmerica's Go.Web certainly doesn't emulate a desktop computer browsing experience, but it does support such features as HTML tables, limited graphics, and even cookies. That's a plus if you visit the same sites repeatedly, because sites can be recalled more quickly with cookies than without. There's no option for turning cookies off, however, which is a negative for people concerned about online privacy, nor can Web pages be saved and read off-line.

We tested GoAmerica's Go.Web with a BlackBerry RIM 957 pager. As with WAP phones, the service doesn't require you to log on to the network. Data-transfer speeds, though, are limited to approximately 9.8 Kbps, about half the speed offered by the CDPD-based services in other sections of this story.

There are options for dealing with the slow transfers. You can set the browser to grab images from "friendly sites only," meaning that only small, quick images are downloaded. Or you can choose not to format tables and to limit page size to 12K. Unfortunately, this doesn't work particularly well. When the page size limit is reached, the browser truncates the page and displays a message at the bottom of the screen, saying that no other data can be displayed. It doesn't provide a link or any other way to retrieve the next section of the Web page. We experimented with increasing the page size limit, but that just led to uncomfortably long download times.

The GoAmerica browser doesn't handle standard HTML pages well. Pages that aren't optimized for hand-held devices are displayed one row at a time. Since pages are often designed as a table with a column of navigation on the left, the navigation often gets stacked on top of the main content of the page. On Amazon.com, for instance, we had to scroll through the entire navigation panel before getting to the rest of the page.

Another problem: The GoAmerica browser doesn't provide any visual indication of how far into a page you are or how much is left to go. It's easy to feel adrift in articles without knowing how much farther you'll have to scroll to reach the end.

When launching the browser, you're automatically taken to the GoAmerica home page. Here, you'll find links to information pages such as CNET News.com, The Industry Standard, MSNBC Mobile, and ZDNet News. Designed for small devices, these sites are readable and easy to navigate. The pagers' thumb-operated track wheel is a convenient feature that brings up a context-sensitive menu to let users perform such tasks as adding a bookmark, displaying bookmarks, or closing the application.

E-mail can be sent directly to the pager. The service also lets you check ten POP3 e-mail accounts, but it won't notify you when new POP3 mail arrives the way the pager will with e-mail sent directly to the pager.

GoAmerica's connection varied in quality and sometimes was completely lost. We noticed substantial differences in how quickly Web pages loaded; this was mostly associated with the time of day and the weather. For example, service was less responsive during business hours, and there was a serious slowdown during a snow storm.

When we tested download times, the two services performed comparably, although GoAmerica seemed to edge out SkyTel slightly. Though we were able to access interactive sites, download times for both services were substantial. Retrieving directions from MapQuest's site, for example, took anywhere from nearly 4 minutes to more than 10.

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Troy Dreier is a technology writer and editor based in Jersey City, NJ. He’s the editor of OnlineVideo.net, senior associate editor for StreamingMedia.com, and a former staff editor for PC Magazine. He’s @tdreier on Twitter.
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